The Neolithic of Mainland Scotland
Edited by Kenneth Brophy, Gavin MacGregor, Ian B. M. Ralston
What was life like in Scotland between 4000 and 2000BC? Where were people living? How did they treat their dead? Why did they spend so much time building extravagant ritual monuments? What was special about the relationship people had with trees and holes in the ground? What can we say about how people lived in the Neolithic and early Bronze Age of mainland Scotland where much of the evidence we have lies beneath the ploughsoil, or survives as slumped banks and ditches, or ruinous megaliths?
AcknowledgementsNotes on ContributorsList of Tables and FiguresForeword
Part 1. Scotland's Mainland Neolithic in Context1. Gordon Barclay: A career in the Scottish Neolithic, Ian Ralston2. Neolithic Past, Neolithic Present: the socio-politics of prehistory, Gavin MacGregor3. ‘Very real shared traditions’. Thinking about similarity and difference in the Scottish Neolithic, Vicki Cummings4. Who were these people? A sideways view and a non-answer of political proportions, Alex Gibson5. Pathways to ancestral worlds: mortuary practice in the Irish Neolithic, Gabriel Cooney
Part 2: Non-megalithic monuments6. Hiatus or hidden? The problem of the missing Scottish upland cursus monuments, Roy Loveday7. Making Memories, Making Monuments: Changing understandings of henge monuments in Central Scotland in prehistory and the present, Rebecca Younger8. Seeing the wood in the trees: the timber monuments of Neolithic Scotland, Kirsty Millican
Part 3: Pits, pots and practice9. Life's the pits! Ritual, refuse and remembrance in North East Scotland, Gordon Noble, Claire Christie and Emma Philip10. Huts, halls and holes: Neolithic settlement in mainland Scotland, Kenneth Brophy11. Rethinking the Balfarg pottery assemblage, Ann MacSween12. Pursuing the penumbral: the deposition of Beaker pottery at Neolithic monuments in Chalcolithic and early Bronze Age Scotland, Neil Wilkin
AppendixBibliographyIndex
The editors have succeeded in providing a sound platform for consideration of the archaeological evidence. Many valuable approaches are presented, as well as tangible strategies for future work to uncover and give voice to a hitherto under-explored region.'
The editors have succeeded in providing a sound platform for consideration of the archaeological evidence. Many valuable approaches are presented, as well as tangible strategies for future work to uncover and give voice to a hitherto under-explored region.
As well as showcasing the wealth of information recently obtained from developer-funded excavations, aerial survey, and radiocarbon dating, the book highlights the many questions that remain to be answered – and underlines the huge contribution made by Gordon Barclay in framing and addressing those questions in his own work.'
An interesting and useful contribution to the literature on the Neolithic. All the papers are worth reading, and the volume as a whole is nicely produced and well-illustrated. The important contributions inside deserve to be read and discussed in depth, as well as ordered for both libraries and (at this very fair price!) personal collections as well.
